What to Know About Workforce Pell Talks

Talks on how to expand the Pell Grant to short-term workforce training programs are progressing after the first two days of rule-making meetings, and no critical areas of disagreement have emerged.

The committee has yet to fully complete its first run through of the Education Department’s 37-page proposal for the expansion known as Workforce Pell, but department officials are still aiming to wrap up the negotiations by Friday.

Most of the department’s proposal sticks relatively close to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which established Workforce Pell. And while members of the negotiation committee remain skeptical on a few details, they’ve generally voiced support for the core concept.

Over all, both the negotiators and outside policy experts agree that this rule-making session is off to a much smoother and more collaborative start than the last one, which largely focused on new limits for graduate student loans.

“Through the first two days of negotiations, conversations have been uniformly constructive and cordial, with negotiators and the department identifying issues and exploring creative solutions,” one committee member told Inside Higher Ed after Tuesday’s meeting ended, on a condition of anonymity. “It feels like the best version of what this is supposed to be.”

Under the new law, the Pell Grant will now cover short-term, career-oriented certificate programs that range from 150 to 599 clock hours or are a credit-based equivalent between eight to 14 weeks in length. Previously, the grant only covered programs more than 15 weeks long.

In order to be eligible for Workforce Pell, programs will have to exist and meet eligibility criteria for at least one year. They also must meet the hiring needs of local employers and be either in-demand, high-skill or high-wage. It will be up to governors to figure out how to determine the demand of such programs.

After that, the program would have to pass a series of completion, job placement and earnings metrics before gaining final approval from the education secretary.

Congress outlined many of the eligibility standards and accountability guidelines, but it’s up to the department and the negotiating committee to address the nuances of implementation and iron out key details regarding how these eligibility criteria will be enforced.

Here’s a quick rundown of three key issues facing the department and negotiators this week.

How Will Noncredit Programs Be Treated?

A key focus throughout the development of Workforce Pell was ensuring that grant dollars would go toward programs that serve as a launching pad for students into further education down the road. That’s easier to do with credit-based programs that can more smoothly be transferred and counted toward a traditional associate or bachelor’s degree. But many of the short-term training programs that Congress intended for Workforce Pell to support are not credit-based, such as certain phlebotomy certificates, cosmetology programs or IT trainings.

Under the department’s proposal, students can use the Workforce Pell Grant to pay for noncredit programs so long as they can count toward a subsequent degree.

The department’s language doesn’t spell out how exactly to determine if a community college or other institution will accept the noncredit certificate and recognize it for credit. The department also states that the instructional portion of a registered apprenticeship, which is often noncredit, can automatically be eligible for Workforce Pell so long as it meets other standards like length of time and industry demand.

Outside student advocates want more information from the department about how this transfer-to-credit recognition will be guaranteed and who will enforce it. They say that without clarity, there will be little accountability and few means to protect students from poor outcomes.

“There is very limited data to determine how these programs perform, so opening the doors for Pell dollars to go to noncredit programs could be harmful for students who are trying to pursue a credential that will give them an earnings boost,” said Emily Rounds, an education policy adviser at Third Way, a left-of-center think tank. “Should noncredit programs be allowed access to Workforce Pell funds, I’d want to see guardrails to protect students and ensure that these programs will be held accountable for their outcomes.”

Department officials have suggested that enforcing transfer from a noncredit program at one institution to a for-credit program at another may have to require explicit agreement and supervision from accreditors, but institutions could also opt to create pathways from noncredit programs directly to their own for-credit programs at the same institution.

Either way, student advocates say they’d like to see those options and requirements more explicitly outlined in the regulatory text.

Can Unaccredited Institutions Get Involved?

The proposal also sets guardrails for how much of each short-term training program higher education institutions can outsource to an unaccredited provider, like a for-profit employer.

Historically, Pell-eligible programs have been able to rely on an outside provider—whether it be an online program manager for virtual courses, a hospital for medical programs or any other employer partner—for up to 50 percent of the instruction. But under the department’s initial proposal, the institutions would only be able to outsource up to 25 percent for Workforce Pell programs.

Committee members have been split on this policy so far. Institutional representatives, especially those advocating for for-profits and community colleges, have said this could be too restrictive and prevent them from outsourcing programs like truck driving or pilot training, which require costly equipment and other capital investments. But student advocates say those are non-instructional contributions and shouldn’t be a problem. What’s more important, they say, is keeping the percentage of unaccredited involvement low to ensure students are getting quality instruction.

“Short-term programs already have questionable outcomes. Inviting an outside entity, such as an unaccredited, for-profit company with zero interest in student success, to handle even part of instruction seems disastrous,” said Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, the investigations manager on the higher education program at New America, a left-leaning think tank.

To Bauer-Wolf, the fact that the Trump administration put a restriction on partnerships in the first place is a warning sign that Workforce Pell could put both students and taxpayers at risk.

“We should heed those concerns and eliminate any possibility that unaccredited providers could access Workforce Pell dollars,” he said.

Who Is Responsible for Calculating Eligibility Metrics?

But regardless of whether it’s for-credit or noncredit programs, committee members and higher education policy experts expect that one of the most consequential regulatory details will be determining who is responsible for collecting the data needed to prove a program meets completion, job placement and earnings standards.

OBBBA requires all Workforce Pell eligible programs to meet three key standards:

• Do at least 70 percent of the students in a program complete it?
• Do at least 70 percent of the students who complete the program get placed in a related job?
• Is tuition for the program less than the difference between the median salary of those who complete the program and 150 percent of the national poverty line?

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act directs the education secretary to determine that a program under consideration for Workforce Pell passes all three standards. But the department’s initial proposal would have state systems conduct the first two, which are often clumped together and colloquially referred to as the 70-70 test.

Multiple committee members, particularly those representing state agencies, have expressed concerns that collecting, processing and analyzing the data needed for this requirement could be difficult for states to handle, especially when it comes to tracking such specific job placements.

In recent years, state higher education and workforce agencies across the country have been working to develop the longitudinal data systems needed to track these kinds of outcomes. But at this point, some states have stronger data infrastructures than others.

And while the department has given states at least one buffer year, under which the original broader standards for job placement will be sufficient, some worry that even that will be difficult. They add that a year is likely not enough time for states to strengthen their data infrastructure, especially given the fact that the department’s decision to punt this responsibility to the states is an unfunded mandate.

“This is placing a very significant burden on states, one that came without resources,” said Rachael Parker, executive director of the Maryland Governor’s Workforce Development Board. “Has there been consideration, or could there be consideration, either for substituting some pieces of this process and putting that burden at the federal level or maybe giving states an opt-out?” she asked.

Department officials said they were open to considering changes, but did say that tracking the 70-70 test at the federal level could limit results to students who depend on federal financial aid funds.

“We certainly are open to those ideas but recognize there are downsides as well,” said David Musser, the department’s negotiator.

Another committee member worried that no matter how strong a state’s infrastructure, it will be hard to track the job placement outcomes of students who attend an institution in one state and then pursue employment in another. And one noted that, at least as the proposal currently stands, it doesn’t account for students who go on to pursue further studies rather than immediately enter the workforce.

Some critics, including community college advocates, have questioned whether it’s necessary to track students’ ability to land a job specific to their field of study. (A similar test has been used to determine programs’ eligibility for short-term loans in the past, and it uses the broader definition of job placement.)

“The law does not require that placement be directly tied to the field of study,” said DeRionne Pollard, president of the American Association of Community Colleges. “Adding this requirement only creates unnecessary administrative work.”

Is There Enough Time?

And while most of these concerns have to do with technical details for implementation rather than objections to the core concept of Workforce Pell, the committee only has three days left to sort it all out. After that, colleges and state systems will have less than six months to put it into effect before the program is slated to launch July 1.

Many higher education policy experts are still concerned that isn’t long enough.

Still, Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent and Jeff Andrade, the deputy assistant secretary for policy, planning and innovation, repeatedly said they intend to stick to the Friday deadline to reach consensus on this proposal.

“We are not asking you to vacillate between two separate and complex topics. By dedicating this week solely to Workforce Pell, we want to ensure that you have the time and the space to fully consider the policy implications, operational challenges and long-term outcomes of this new program,” Kent said Monday. “We encourage each of you to stay actively engaged with your stakeholder groups throughout the week, to gather questions, perspectives and insights, but we also have a clear statutory deadline to meet, and we fully intend to meet it with your expertise and collaboration.”